Strength and Physique

Plateaus. Everybody hits a plateau or two in some aspect of life, whether it’s in your career, relationships, education or creative endeavors. Sometimes I get the plateau of writer’s bloc, but I get over that pretty easily.

Plateaus are there for a reason, and that’s to tell you to change things up. People do not learn or work at a constant increasing linear rate. That’s not natural. Growth and changes in life always come in bursts, but it’s up to you to create those bursts of development.

With strength training, it is no different. Having trained a number of clients, I’ve across these common training plateaus:

1) Sporadic/Infrequent Training- Technically, this is not a plateau at all, because a plateau indicates something has been started and maintained, but progess has leveled off. Someone who trains sporadically just needs to train regularly to see results, at least 2 times a week.

2) Inconsistent Training- This is different from sporadic training. Inconsistent training simply means you’re changing things up without rhyme or reason. The inconsistent trainee has exercise A.D.D. and does whatever s/he wants for that day or, in extreme cases, for that minute. This erratic type of training doesn’t build any foundation of strength. For this guy to see any results, he just needs to pick a program and stick with it.

3) Static Training- This is the exact opposite of inconsistent training. This guy does the same thing over and over, workout from workout. Even when this guy changes it up, he doesn’t stray far, because he can only think of one parameter to change up: the exercise.

In reality, there are many parameters to a program that can be changed up. For example, if you train with high reps, then you’ll gain by training with lower reps at heavier weight. Your muscles have to adapt to the higher tension of the weight by growing in size and thickness. Conversely, if you train with heavy weight and low reps, then you’ll gain size by training with higher reps. Your muscles adapt to the longer time under tension by getting bigger. So for the static trainer to blast through plateaus, he just needs to shake things up.

Check out Strength and Physique, V1 on Amazon

I love butter, and I’ve known for a long time that it’s much healthier than margarine. Here’s an interesting forward from Craig’s List my wife sent me:

"Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback. So they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food appeal, so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavorings."

"Do you know the difference between margarine and butter? Read on to the end. Gets very interesting!

- Both have the same amount of calories.
- Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams compared to 5 grams.
- Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

- Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.
- Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few,
only because they are added!

- Butter tastes much better than margarine, and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
- Butter has been around for centuries, whereas margarine has been around for less than 100 years.

And now, for Margarine:
- Very high in trans fatty acids.
- Triple the risk of coronary heart disease.
- Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol)
- Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold.
- Lowers quality of breast milk.
- Decreases immune response.
- Decreases insulin response.

And here’s the most disturbing fact. HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC. This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).

You can try this yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)

* it does not rot or smell differently, because it has no nutritional value. Nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow. Why? Because it is nearly plastic. Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

Share this with your friends (If you want to ‘butter them up’)!

"Thanks, as always for your great blog. I just ordered your book. May I ask you a question? I’m 33, and I started bodybuilding 8 months ago. During the first 6 months I went from 230 to 200, and now I’m starting to tone and pack on the muscle. The key for me was diet. I’m an ectomorph and eating a LOT of the right things at the right times was just what I needed. At the moment I train with weights 3 times a week with light (10 minutes) cardio, plus some sports one or two days a week (snowboarding, swimming plus Muay Thai).

My question for you is this: I’ve been asked to do a marathon (or a half marathon) in September. Is it practical to train for this and keep doing weights 3 times a week, or will it screw up my muscle gains? I’d really like to keep developing the muscular physique that’s just starting to appear. If you think it’s possible for me to achieve both goals, then how should I balance my training. How should I eat and drink before and during running practice over the next 4 months?

Cheers
Steve M.
Oslo, Norway

My Answer: Thanks for ordering my book, Steve! I know you’ll enjoy it. To answer your question, I think it’s not practical at all to train for a marathon AND to train for muscular size. Training for a marathon will screw up your muscle gains in multiple ways:

1) you’ll lose the muscle size that you have now
2) it’ll prevent you gaining any more size and muscle
3) hormonally-speaking, you’ll be castrated

Marathon training will raise your levels of cortisol through the roof and inversely deplete your testosterone. My advice to you is prioritize which one you want more: a muscular rock body or to run a marathon. If you can avoid a marathon, then just avoid it. But if you must do a marathon, then let me give you a few suggestions:

1) Keep eating mega amounts of food. An overabundance of calories will exert some damage control over the cortisol release.

2) Bring the reps down to the 4-8 range and do multiple sets per exercise in the gym. The book will go over the Machine Gun Method, and that will help you maintain some muscle.

3) Start cutting out the sports for the time being. Your being overtrained as it is. Pick up the sports after you complete the marathon.

4) To minimize overtraining, your workouts in the gym should not exceed 45 minutes.

Like I said, I don’t recommend training for different goals. But if you must do it, then good luck to you, Steve.

"Hey, the Strength and Physique, Volume One book is awesome!! Definitely a good book to have in your collection. But I’m a little tossed between my dieting and cardio plan. My goal is to gain size and lean muscle, but I’m not to sure what type of cardio to do. I’m already on the skinny side, but without the ripped six pack. Should I be doing cardio at all seeing that I’m trying to gain size?”

-thx man

My Answer: If you’re on the skinny side, then forego the cardio for now until you gain some muscle. Your body likes to concentrate on one goal and one function. You know the saying, "Jack of all trades, master of none." What you can do is alternate between mass phases and fat loss phases. That way you concentrate on one goal at a time. Gain as much mass as you can for a few weeks and don’t do any cardio. Once you start smoothing out just a little too much, start dieting and adding in the cardio.

Do interval training, don’t do steady state cardio. In other words, rather than jog steadily for 30-45 minutes, do sprint intervals. Do an all-out sprint for as long as you can, then walk for 60-90 seconds, and repeat for about 20 minutes. And when I mean sprint, I mean ALL OUT, balls to the wall, I’m-going-to get-you sucka chase. If you’re doing cardio out in the city streets, then you can use telephone poles as markers: sprint from one telephone pole to the next, then walk to the next pole and so on and so forth for 20 minutes.